The foundry technology developed earlier in China. During the period of Shangzhou, the foundry technology in China was quite developed and many exquisite objects were produced. Now the technology has strengthened the casting accuracy and improved the technological process, which makes the foundry industry present a new blood. At present, the foundry industry in China is still relatively backward compared with some developed countries, so China urgently needs to open up a new world in the foundry industry.
China’s foundry industry has experienced four stages of starting, stability, development and maturity in the process of transition from “planned economy” to “market economy”, and has made remarkable achievements. However, we must have a clear understanding of the historical responsibility of the foundry industry and the actual gap with developed countries, firmly grasp the development trend of foundry technology at home and abroad, appropriately adopt advanced foundry technology, and implement the sustainable development strategy of the foundry industry. At present, the foundry industry mainly has the following problems.
There is a big gap between the average scale of foundry enterprises and the economic scale and that of foreign countries. Although China’s casting output has been ranked first in the world for five consecutive years, there are a number of large and medium-sized enterprises with high output, but most of them are small-scale. As far as the whole foundry industry is concerned. The current situation is still that there are many factories (more than 20000 foundry sites), many employees (as many as 1.2 million people), low efficiency (the average casting capacity is only 500t / year), only equivalent to 1 / 9-1 / 4 of the industrial developed countries such as the United States, Japan, Germany, France and Italy.
The overall technical equipment level of foundry enterprises is far behind that of foreign countries. There is a large gap in the level of technical equipment between enterprises. The level of technical equipment in individual production workshops of a few enterprises is close to or up to the international advanced level, but the overall level is not high. According to statistics, China has imported more than 210 automatic molding lines from abroad and more than 250 domestic molding production lines, which are mainly concentrated in large-scale production enterprises of automobile internal combustion engine parts.
There is a big gap between the R & D and innovation ability of China’s foundry enterprises and that of foreign countries. According to statistics, none of the more than 30 major foundry inventions in the world is Chinese. There are few casting products with high technology content, high added value, independent intellectual property rights and international reputation in our country. However, we have to spend a certain amount of money to import casting products with high technical requirements in industrial production every year.
High labor intensity, high energy consumption, high resource consumption and high environmental pollution are common phenomena in China’s foundry enterprises. Casting is a labor-intensive industry. Some domestic enterprises do not use equipment in the production process, such as feeding in the melting process, manual pouring in the pouring process, and handling in the process of casting sand removal and cleaning, so the labor intensity of manual operation is very high. Casting is a big energy consumer. One of the reasons for the high cost of casting manufacturing is the high energy consumption of casting. The average energy consumption in China is about twice or more than that in the developed countries.
There is a serious fault between engineers and technicians in foundry enterprises, and there is a lack of R & D personnel. Due to the poor environment, high labor intensity and low treatment of personnel in the foundry industry, some engineering technicians and technical workers are lost. However, many of the relevant personnel working in the casting production line are not trained systematically and can not meet the requirements of modern production. With the decrease of foundry specialty in Colleges and universities in China, the shortage of foundry technical talents, especially the senior technical talents with innovation ability, will be more serious in the future.
